I am going to be eating cheese for a while. I had a Lia Sophia jewelry party, and chose to serve wine and cheese. I even got a book from the library to read up on the subject. I paired up four wines with five cheeses: Romano, Camembert, Fontina, Manchego, and Gruyere. Each had their own distinct flavor, and were really nice with the wines. Of course I had to try every wine too, so I might have had a little too much. But hey, it's a party! I really wish there were pictures of the cheese, but I forgot. Here are the almost-empty wine bottles though. The guy at Stew Leonard was super-helpful; pretty much all the wines were based on his recommendations and my little knowledge. Here is a rundown, using a new made-up scoring system: number of things. Five is the best possible number of things you can get.
First, there was Prosecco sparkling wine from Villa Jaime. I realized later that where I've heard of it: Giada Delaurentis uses it a lot in cocktails on her show. So it must be E-tal-yan. It was paired with Romano and Camembert cheeses. They say the bubbles help distribute the cheese flavor on the tongue. I give this pairing "three and a half things." The wine was a bit dry with the hard Romano.
Here we have a Riesling, which seems to have become popular in recent years. It's not too sweet or dry, as some Rieslings can be. It went with a nice wedge of Fontina cheese. Fontina is a very mild cheese, semi-soft, kind of similiar to mozzerella or Monterey jack, which I happen to enjoy a lot. I will give this pairing "four and a half things."
Next up is a classic Merlot. This wine was recommended by Isreal at Stew Leonard. He said it was their own brand, and don't be fooled by the $6.99 price tag. It was quite good, if you like Merlot. I think I do, and this one was nice, but sometimes they can be too dry. Gruyere was the cheese of choice here, and I'm not sure how much I liked it. It was a bit of a stinky style of cheese, which made it sharp. Other guests seemed to enjoy it though, so I will give this pairing "four things."
Lastly, there is Syrah, a blend of three grapes (hence this particular brand: Menage a Trois). I liked this one a lot. It was very smooth, which for me makes it more enjoyable, for me at least. The cheese with this wine was a big hit: Manchego, from Spain. It's a semi-hard cheese, with a salty but smooth bite to it. Quince paste (a firm jelly made from the quince fruit) is often eaten with it, but I served it with fig preserves, which was awesome. I give this pairing "five things."
I hope you enjoyed reading about wine and cheese as much as I enjoyed consuming them!
I started watching it a few months ago, but it's been on History Channel for a couple seasons now (I think it's the fourth starting soon). This guy Don (Jersey boy!) goes to various cities and explores the underground, finding tunnels, caves, ruins, etc. People will be living and working as usual and underneath them would be some strange old feature, like Hitler's hideout or Roman ruins, or some such thing. Some even have layers of history built up, so the lowest layer of ruins is the oldest, and so on up. There's entire worlds under pretty much
every city out there, remarkably preserved, and so much of it has historical significance. Don is REALLY into it, you can tell he's very educated on the locations before he goes, and then has no fear as he find little holes and decides to climb through and check it out. There's also the occasional "!#$@ this just keeps going!"
